How to get started "talking to customer" when you have no product yet?
One of the top pieces of advice people give is to talk to your customers but how do you start that conversation when you have nothing?
Do you send a cold email asking their opinion on your product plan?
What do you then do if you recieve no responses, how do you know if it's a product issue or are they just not interested in speaking you?
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I interview them.
In fact, it's usually just one question: "what is the number one problem that your business faces in terms of [your niche]".
This usually gets people talking.
Via what medium? Do you find your customers in person? Call them?
Email is my first priority. Some people schedule meetings or calls on Skype, I haven't tried that but I think it may be worth it.
LinkedIn is the second best option, for some industries it may be the best actually.
Messaging on social media comes third, forums come fourth.
I have yet to find a customer in person, but I hardly ever build products that scale that way. Some people have success with trade shows and meetups and conferences etc, usually for more high-end products.
Interesting, thanks
You're right - this stage is difficult! Everything gets easier with first product/users/traction.
Two common pieces of advice come to mind:
(1) find the segment of people who would be most desperate for your product, they are most likely to be open to talking to you
(2) if you have no product, talk to them about how currently they solve the problem that your product will solve. If they mention workarounds or clunky solutions, you might be onto something!
If your business is B2C based, you can create quality content on your industry and establish yourself as a source of knowledge.
I think this applies to both B2C and B2B and it's a great idea but it takes time to establish credibility in an industry.
I was thinking more about before you get to that point. How do you know if you will have market fit and whether thid industry is right for your business
I think it's more on what you have to offer. Can you educate or provide good content in a market? It could be a business audience or consumer audience.
If you can't think of any content to write or produce, then it's probably not the market for you.
I'm facing the same problem. After a few false starts, I've sworn not to write any more code until I've validated an idea. I'm creating landing pages with product mockups, then reaching out to people, trying to start a real conversation, and linking back to the landing page when needed.
That's a good idea.
I've had a few false starts too, nothing worse than binding something no one wants.
Showing someone a landing page and some mockups seems like a good way to start the conversation with customers. It feels more scalable too compared with mass cold emails.
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"No product and looking for customers" is not just a startup problem. I worked at Philips Semiconductors. Our job there was to convince the TV guys (Samsung, Sony, etc.) that we will deliver in 2 years a System-on-Chip (SoC) they could put in their TV sets 3 years from now, so they could go to the "Best Buy"s of the world and convince them they will have a TV set with all the features required 4 years from now.
People only buy from people they trust. You don't need a product to start establishing trust. Consistently show up, listen, listen some more (never hurts), be respectful (especially of people's time). I know a few companies that got bought before they even had a product because bigger names thought they had the right attitude to do something ground breaking in the industry they were in.